The Brady’s seem to be hot on the Washington Post’s trail to see who can get the deepest in the tank for the Administration. An Administration, I would point out, the Brady’s haven’t liked very much. Paul Helmke notes:

Rep. Issa and others can point fingers at the ATF for mounting a failed mission, but it is Congress that prevents the ATF from getting an annual inventory from dealers on guns sales to address the problem of guns “disappearing” from gun shops with no record of sales. That stops the agency from quickly shutting down corrupt shops.

Except this isn’t about corrupt shops, and none of those advocated policies would have done anything to reduce the damage done by Fast and Furious. Remember, ATF leadership was encouraging straw sales, sales suspicious enough to make the dealers call ATF to report them. ATF told the dealers to proceed, apparently without much real effort to track those firearms or arrest the buyers. There’s no policy prescription in Brady’s current formulary that would have done anything to stop a government agency from deliberately letting guns walk, in the hands of criminals.

That the Brady Campaign would continue to make excuses and deflect on this issue tells me gun violence is not their real concern. Their only interest in gun violence is to the extent that hobby horse can be ridden to justify more restrictions on the Second Amendment.

Helmke is flakking for Obama. It wasn’t a failed mission, it went off with scarcely a hitch, until it was discovered. The failure is criminal and political, not operational. ATF, with its billion-dollar-a-year budget, was easily capable of doing as it pleased, and did so. That’s the problem.
There were plenty of laws on the books for ATF to use to stop the guns going over the border. Making straw purchases in bulk, and then smuggling the guns into Mexico illegal? Who would have guessed? Certainly not Helmke; he’s still howling for more laws as if we didn’t already have too many. The dealers knew it was illegal and they begged ATF to act. The dealers were told to shut up and make the sales. ATF agents knew it was illegal and they begged ATF to let them act. They were told to shut up and let the guns disappear over the border.
However, it may be that ATF was merely used as a cat’s paw in this, which would explain Melson’s anger and defiance (“‘Gun Walker’ Fall Guy Refuses to Fall”). It was the anti-gun Obama administration, eager to pass new gun laws under pressure from Helmke and his Brady Campaign that really needed the uptick in violence to help them get their gun laws through Congress. If the facts on the ground weren’t sufficient for their purposes, they would change the facts by putting more dead bodies on the ground. Sending 2,500 AKs to the murderous drug cartels in Mexico was like pouring gasoline on a fire, but it would help them politically. They wanted a bigger fire, and they got it, but now they’re getting burned by it and they don’t like it. They were evil and stupid. They really were that evil and stupid. Don’t believe me? Ask Brian Terry.